Grigsbee: No expert answer here. But I can tell you that we took down 3 large douglas firs in our backyard, letting the sun shine through. The reason was they were damaged by bugs, they had to go! But we took out the sad excuse for grass and put in a very large dahlia bed. The first year, I do believe there were more bugs than usual. But now, my area works just fine for dahlias. Don't know that helps, but if there's soil and sun, I'm usually game to give it a try as a dahlia place. Phyllis

I took out a large maple tree that was dying and turned it into my dahlia bed. I just added some more topsoil so I wasn't trying to dig in the tree roots that were still in the ground. My dahlias did really well in that area.

Good Luck
Linda

Thank you for your input. Still not sure what I will put there in the spring.